A Fresh Angle on ‘Carmen’

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore appears, allegro ma grazioso, at the door of a Dorothy Chandler Pavilion rehearsal room. She pauses at the threshold to apologize for some imagined tardiness (“Hope I haven’t kept y’all waiting!”) and alights delicately in a chair--offering proof that the diva’s entrance isn’t a lost art after all.

Still Southern even after a decade spent nurturing her much-touted career primarily in Europe, the 40-year-old Atlanta native is in Los Angeles to sing “Carmen” in the production that opens the L.A. Opera season Tuesday, with Placido Domingo as Don Jose (American tenor Jacque Trussel will share the role). Although she recorded Bizet’s Gypsy seductress in 1996 and sang the role in concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1997, this will be Larmore’s first staged performance of “Carmen”--a fact all the more noteworthy given that the singer is best known for her Rossini heroines, as well as her portrayal of men in Mozart and Handel “trouser” roles. Renowned for a rich, natural coloratura and a sweetly agile vocal technique, Larmore seems born to play the part of one of Rossini’s plucky girls. An earthy, aggressive heroine such as Carmen, on the other hand, will present the singer with a far different challenge, both musically and dramatically.

Trained at Westminster Choir College in New Jersey, the Chicago-based belle of bel canto received a great deal of acclaim in major European houses during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. Then, starting in the mid-’90s, she began bringing her career back home, with well-received debuts at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera and L.A. Opera, where she was last heard in the title role of Rossini’s “L’italiana in Algeri” (The Italian Girl in Algiers) in 1996.

Larmore answered questions in the midst of rehearsing “Carmen.”

Question: It’s been a few years since you were last heard in L.A. How have things been going?

Answer: It’s been good for me in America in the last few years. I think there’s been quite an evolution to my voice, too. I think it’s gotten a bit deeper, a bit darker. And that’s awfully exciting, because you know there’s a future for Jennifer Larmore in this business. I’m not just going to be doing the same things over and over.

I’m lucky in that in the last years, I’ve been able to kind of expand my repertoire--with “Carmen,” which is the most obvious example, and which is quite different from all the coloratura roles that I’ve been doing. Also, I get to die in this opera. I normally don’t die. I end up happy, or somebody’s taking a photo of us at the end, and everything is smiles and happiness.

Q: Isn’t it unusual for a mezzo to feel like she’s got a wide range of roles yet to explore?

A: It used to be, in the days of Callas for example, that the mezzo-sopranos really were not the glamour voices. It was always the sopranos, or the tenors. But nowadays, we’re able to do a lot more repertoire because people like Marilyn Horne paved the way. I think it’s a very good time to be a mezzo. It has been for me.

Q: Now that you’ve reached a certain level of recognition, has the pressure to build a career eased up?

A: It’s like any new business. You work your tush off to get it going. And then, when it’s at a good place, you feel like you should be able to pull back a little bit, but really you have to keep working just as hard.

I’m one of those people that really enjoys the work. I enjoy the process of rehearsing. I enjoy putting a show together. My eyes get really wide when I’m thinking about characters, or what the day holds and which rehearsals I have to do. I enjoy that. A lot of people want to get through the rehearsal process and onto the stage. I enjoy being on the stage as well, but I was always a real schoolgirl, too. I loved getting my pencil and paper ready for the first day of school. I’ve always enjoyed the process of learning.

When I was about 17, my boyfriend asked me to marry him, and I said, “No, I want to sing, to have a career.” My mother always said, “Jenny, you’ve had a one-track mind all your life. All you ever wanted to do was sing.” And she’s right: That’s all I ever wanted to do. And I had good counsel. Nobody does it all by themselves. You don’t build a career by yourself.

Q: Let’s talk about “Carmen.” What made you want to tackle this role?

A: I think it started when I was really young, 12 or 13 or something like that. The Metropolitan Opera would come to Atlanta, and my dad and mom would take me to see it. I remember I did see “Carmen.” I don’t remember specifics, but I remember hearing the arias.

I didn’t think about it for many years, because I started on a completely different repertoire. Then, about four or five years ago, I started picking it back up again and looking at it. I was one of those people that had this idea that “Carmen” is a really heavy, almost verismo type of singing, that you need a big voice for it, and I was kind of scared of it. . . . [But] I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge. It is [a long way] from what I’m known for, but it’s not musically. And that was my misconception.

People kept saying, “When are you going to do ‘Carmen’?” and planting this seed in my head. Finally, I started to seriously consider it. And when I delved into the music, I saw this isn’t verismo, it doesn’t require a big, heavy mezzo voice. This requires someone who has a knowledge of art song.

Bizet was, to me, a genius. Everything I need to know about Carmen is written in the music--little interpolations here and there that are so obviously thoughts. You can hear it. Bizet wrote exactly what I’m supposed to be thinking about, right in those little interpolations. I love a composer like that. It makes my job so much easier.

The more I do it, the more I’m finding out about the role. I feel like I’ve added dimensions to her, like she’s more fleshed out as a character. And I’m a reactor as an actress. So now that I have my colleagues playing off of me, I’m able to react and it works better. It makes it more dimensional than just standing in front of a microphone and trying to create the drama in your head. I play the castanets and do the dancing, too. It makes a difference when you get it inside of you, in your body.

I know that one day I will record “Carmen” again, and it will be totally different. And I’ll be glad that I had the two recordings. That [first] recording gave me a chance to really get to know the music, and to know the music correctly.

Q: What is it about this character that makes so many singers want to take a shot at her?

A: Well, Don Jose is a military man. What in the world would make a military man give up everything? For a couple of hours, he might go and get some vulgar woman who picks up her skirt with her teeth. But he’s certainly not going to give up his whole career, which is very important to him, for someone like that. But he might do it for the kind of woman who will whisper just the right thing in his ear, that has sensuality coming out of every pore, and who can sing it and bring it out in the voice. That’s what makes Carmen to me.

Everybody has their own Carmen in their head. That’s fine. But my Carmen will be my Carmen. She’s a Gypsy, and she has all the pride of that. But just because she’s a Gypsy doesn’t mean she’s a whore. She’s got fire, and she cares deeply about things. And when she falls in love, she falls really hard. But when she falls out, she falls completely out. I like the kind of character that can be sweet and vulnerable one moment, and turn on a dime and get her claws in you.

Q: Now that you’ve arrived at a point where you can pretty much pick and choose your creative challenges, how do you feel about the road you took to get here? Was working in Europe the best way to get started?

A: One of my passions is helping young singers. I feel like it’s maybe harder for them now than it was for me when I started out 11 years ago. We live in a very visual society now. People want to see the ideal character. They want to see somebody who looks good, that can dance, that can sing and do it all. That’s what they’re used to now. And publicity is a big part of the opera singer now. I enjoy that part; it’s fun to me. I think that a lot of my colleagues, they don’t want to have to deal with that.

Especially in America, young singers don’t have a lot of opportunities. Now, there are hardly any grants. And money is what a young singer has got to have. Otherwise, they get stuck waitressing and working jobs and it’s a Catch-22. They can’t get out of it. And so that’s why I always tell them, “Go to Europe.” We have no choice.

The American companies can pick the cream of the crop. And they’re not going to pick you [if] you’re unknown and they need to sell tickets.

I’m in the process of writing a book, compiling material from singers like Renee Fleming, Thomas Hampson, Frederica von Stade who are in the business, asking them: “How do you do it? What is your advice?” I wish there had been something like that when I started. It would have made it a lot easier for me.

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“Carmen,” L.A. Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tuesday, 7 p.m.; Friday, next Sunday and Sept. 16, 22, 25, 7:30 p.m.; Sept. 19, 2 p.m. Placido Domingo sings Don Jose on Tuesday, Friday, next Sunday and Sept. 22; Jacque Trussel, Sept. 16, 19, 25. $25-$137. (213) 365-3500.